Breakfast Bites – Festive Cinnamon Whirls.

Everybody says that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, however it is always the one we mostly forget, and for those of us who do remember, we don’t always have time to eat. These festive cinnamon whirls are a quick grab-and-go pastry, and you can make them any time of the year!

There are thousands of different versions of cinnamon whirls but for my recipe you will need:

• ‘Jus Rol’ puff pastry
• 75g Light Brown sugar
• 75g Butter (softened)
• Cinnamon – as much as you wish to use, but personally I used 1 tbsp.
• Cranberries – to decorate
• Icing sugar – I didn’t actually use this on my batch, however, if you want a bit of additional decoration a simple drizzle-type icing will do.

 

To start with, set your oven to 180C. Then you will need  your chilled puff pastry; mine had been in the fridge and left out for about five minutes just to make the rolling easier. Once you’ve laid your puff pastry out and it has been rolled into a rectangle shape, place it on a piece of baking paper and set it aside to start on your filling.

For your filling, you need to mix the butter and sugar in a bowl. Once it is all together, add your desired amount of cinnamon and mix this in thoroughly so that there are no clumps.

With your mix, using a spatula, spread it out on the puff pastry, being careful not to over-fill or it will all come out of the shape when cooking. Once it has all been spread evenly, you have two options. If you wish to have the cranberries in the swirls, sprinkle some on top of the mixture, or if you’d rather use them to decorate the top, skip this step. Of course you can do both if you wish to!

This is when you roll the pastry up, you can do this either way really but I prefer to roll along the longest side as it gives you more swirls. Then, cut the cinnamon swirls to the size you wish them to be and place them on a baking tray. Cook these for about 20 minutes, until they are a golden brown. Once cooked and taken out of the oven, immediately use a spatula to lift the swirls up to make sure they don’t stick. Leave these to cool for about 10-15 minutes, before sprinkling cranberries on the top. If you are using icing sugar, drizzle it on the top when the swirls are completely cool.

This is how mine turned out! Although mine aren’t very uniform, they were really delicious and the perfect breakfast snack. As you can see I had mine with some orange and mango juice and Christmas crumpets (With a cherry compote). What will you have yours with?